Facilitating television based interaction with social networking tools

ABSTRACT

Video analysis may be used to determine who is watching television and their level of interest in the current programming Lists of favorite programs may be derived for each of a plurality of viewers of programming on the same television receiver.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/994,761 filed on Jun. 17, 2013, hereby expressly incorporated byreference herein.

BACKGROUND

This relates generally to television and to interaction with socialnetworking tools.

Social networking tools have become essential to the lives of manypeople. Social networking tools allow their users to keep track of theirfriends and to find sources of additional contacts with existing and newfriends.

One advantage of social networking is that friends with similarinterests can be identified. However, to determine what those interestsare usually requires a lot of user input. For example, a user maymaintain a Facebook page that indicates area of interest. The amount ofinformation that may be provided may be limited because of the amount oftime that it takes and the amount of imagination it may involve toprovide a full exposition of all the user's interests, likes, anddislikes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic depiction of one embodiment of the presentinvention;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart for one embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 is a flow chart for another embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In accordance with some embodiments, information about a user'stelevision experience may be automatically conveyed to social networkingtools as a modality for increasing social interaction. Moreover, someembodiments may actually determine, not only whether the user is online,but also whether the user is actually proximate to the user's televisiondisplay. In some embodiments, it can be determined from the user'sfacial expressions whether or not the user likes or dislikes thecurrently displayed programming. Also, in some embodiments, favoriteprogram lists for various television viewers may be compiled in anautomated fashion. This information may then be uploaded to socialnetworking tools or to other avenues for social interaction.

Referring to FIG. 1, a television display 18 may be equipped, in oneembodiment, with a television camera 16. While, in some embodiments, thetelevision camera may be mounted on or integrated with the televisiondisplay 18, the camera, of course, can be completely separate from thetelevision display. However, it is advantageous that the camera 16 bemounted in a way that it can capture images of those people watching thetelevision and can also capture their facial expressions. Thus, thetelevision 18 may receive a video source which may be an airwavebroadcast, streaming Internet information, a digital movie from astorage device, such as a DVD player, an interactive game played overthe Internet or using a digital media player.

The output from the camera 16 may be connected to a processor-basedsystem 10. The processor-based system 10 may be any type of computer,including a laptop computer, a desktop computer, an entertainmentdevice, or a cell phone, to mention a few examples. The processor-basedsystem 10 may include a video interface 22 that receives the video fromthe camera 16 and converts it to the proper format for use by aprocessor 12. The video interface may provide the video for a userstatus module 24.

In accordance with one embodiment, the user status module determineswhether the user is actually online and, in some embodiments, whetherthe user is actually watching television. The online status can bedetermined from detecting inputs and outputs through a network interfacecontroller, for example. Whether the user is actually viewing theprogram can be determined, for example, from video analysis of thecamera 16 video feed to detect whether the user is present in front ofthe television screen.

In some embodiments, the user status module may detect numeroustelevision viewers. Each of those viewers may be identified by automatedfacial analysis. For example, in the setup mode, each viewer may beprompted to cooperate in the capture of a picture of the user. Then thesystem can compare the images of faces of viewers of the televisionprogram with those prerecorded video clips or still shots taken during asetup mode, to identify the currently active viewers.

Thus, user status module 24, in some embodiments, not only indicateswhether or not any viewer is viewing the television but actuallyidentifies which of a plurality of viewers are actually viewing thetelevision display 18.

The user status module may be coupled to a user interest detectionmodule 26 that also receives a video feed from the video interface 22.The user interest detection module 26 may analyze the user's facialexpressions using video facial expression analysis tools to determinewhether the user is interested in the program or disinterested.Likewise, facial expression analysis can be used to determine whetherthe user likes the program or dislikes the program. Information from theuser interest detection module may be combined with the results from theuser status module for provision of information to a social networkinginterface 28. In some embodiments, instantaneous video facial analysisof the user's likes and dislikes may be conveyed to social networkingtools. A “social networking tool,” as used herein, is an electroniccommunication technology, such as a website, that helps people interactwith existing friends or colleagues and/or helps people discover newfriends or colleagues by illuminating shared interests. Also, emails,tweets, text messages or other communications may be provided, as partof a social networking tool, to indicate the user's current activity andlevel of satisfaction.

In some embodiments video clips from the television program may becaptured and conveyed to the processor 12 for distribution over thesocial networking interface 28 together with an indication of the user'sviewing status and the user's current level of interest.

The storage 14 may store the captured video and may also store programs30 and 50 for implementing embodiments of the present invention.

In particular in some embodiments of the present invention, thesequences depicted in FIGS. 2 and 3 may be implemented in hardware,software and/or firmware. In software or firmware implementedembodiments, the sequences may be implemented by computer executedinstructions stored on a non-transitory storage medium such as asemiconductor, magnetic or optical storage device.

Referring to FIG. 2, one sequence may begin in one embodiment byreceiving a feed (as indicated in block 32) from the camera 16, shown inFIG. 1. An initial phase (block 34) may involve a password login througha user interface or a face login wherein the user submits to videofacial analysis using the camera 16 and the user status module 24. Oncethe user has identified himself or herself through a login and/or facialrecognition, the user may select a video program for viewing asindicated in block 36. This program may be identified using a variety oftools including capturing information from an electronic programmingguide, capturing video, audio or metadata clips and analyzing them usinginputs from the user's friends over social networking tools or fromInternet or database image or text searching or using any other tool.Then the user's online status may be determined through video facedetection as indicated in block 38. Namely the user can be identifiedthrough analysis of the camera feed 16 to determine that the user notonly is active on his or her processor based system 10 but is actuallyin front of and viewing an active television program.

Next the level of user interest may be determined using facialexpression analysis as indicated in block 40. Well known video facialanalysis techniques for determining whether the user is interested ordisinterested or whether the user likes or dislikes a particularsequence in the video may be used. Thus information in real time may beprovided to indicate whether the user's level of interest or disinterestor likes or dislikes have changed. This may be correlated to currentcontent being viewed in terms of time, for example, while providingcaptured video clips from that content together with the indication ofthe user's level of interest.

The video facial analysis can be done locally or remotely. Remote videoanalysis may be accomplished by sending video to a remote server over anetwork connection, for example.

The information deduced from the facial expression analysis may then beconveyed to friends using social networking tools as indicated in block42. In some embodiments, the social networking message distribution maybe screened or filtered so only those users who are friends, friends wholike the same television program, friends who are actually online,friends who are actually watching television or some combination ofthese categories as indicated in block 42. Friends can then be linked ifthey like the same television program, for example.

This social networking tool interaction provides a means for providinginformation about the user which may facilitate engagement with newfriends and create resources for interaction with existing friends. Inaddition, the information may be used for demographics collection bycontent providers and advertisers. Particularly, content providers oradvertisers may get very detailed information about what users liked atparticular times during a given program or advertisement.

With one exemplary embodiment, six major steps may be used for facialattribute detection. First, the face detection may be run to locate aface rectangle region for a given digital image or video frame. Then, afacial landmark detector may be run to find six point landmarks, such aseye-corners and mouth corners, in each detected face rectangle. Next,the face rectangle image may be aligned and normalized according tofacial landmark points to a predefined standard size, such as 64×64(i.e., 64 pixels wide by 64 pixels tall). Then local features may beextracted, including local binary patterns, histograms, or histograms oforiented gradients from preselected local regions of the normalized faceimages. Each local region is then fed to a multi-layer perception basedweak classifier for prediction. The output from the weak classifiers ofeach local region are aggregated as the final detection score. The scoremay be in the range of 0-1, the larger the score the higher the facialattribute detection confidence. Face detection may follow the standardViola-Jones boosting cascade framework. The Viola-Jones detector can befound in the public OpenCV software package. The facial landmarksinclude six facial points, including eye-corners from the left and righteyes and mouth corners. The eye-corners and mouth corners may also bedetected using Viola-Jones based classifiers. In addition, geometryconstraints may be incorporated to six facial points to reflect theirgeometry relationship.

All detected faces may be converted to gray scale, aligned andnormalized to the predefined standard size such as 64×64. The alignmentmay be done by first computing the rotation angle between the eye cornerlines and the horizontal line. Then the image angle is rotated to makethe eye corner parallel to the horizontal line. Next, two eye-centerdistances w are computed and eye-to-mouth distance h is computed. Then a2w×2h rectangle is cropped from the face region to make the lefteye-center at 0.5w,0.5h, right center 0.5w,0.5h, and mouth center atw,1.5h. The cropped rectangle is finally scaled to the standard size. Toalleviate lighting differences between images, the scaling image can behistogram equalized.

Local features on local regions of aligned and normalized faces may beextracted. The local features can be local binary patterns, histogram,histogram of oriented gradients. For example, the extracted localfeatures may be different for different facial attributes. For example,in smile detection, local binary patterns are a little better than othertechniques while in gender/age detection, histogram of oriented gradientworks slightly better.

The local region is defined as a quadruple (x,y,w,h), where (x,y) is atop left corner point of the local region and (w,h) is the width andheight of the rectangle of the local region. A boosting algorithm may beused to select discriminating regions for facial attribute detectionfrom a training dataset.

For each selected local region, a classifier may be trained to do theweak classification. The base classifier may be multi-layer perceptionsrather than support vector machines. Multi-layer perceptions (MLP) maybe advantageous in some embodiments because it can provide similarperformance to state of the art support vector machine-based algorithms.Also, the model size of the MLP is much smaller than the support vectormachines (SVM), since MLP only stores network weights as models whileSVM stores sparse training samples. The prediction of MLP is relativelyfast as it only contains vector product operations and MLP directlygives probability and score output but only for prediction confidence.

The MLP may include an input layer, an output layer and one hiddenlayer. Suppose there are d nodes at the input layer, where d is thedimension of the local features, 59 for local binary pattern histograms,2 nodes at the output layer for smile detection and 2 nodes indicateprediction probability for smiling or non-smiling, while the number ofnodes in the hidden layer is a tuned parameter and determined by atraining procedure.

All nodes, known as neurons, in MLP may be similar. MLP may take theoutput values from several nodes in the previous layer on input and passthe responses to the neurons in the next layer. The values retrievedfrom the previous layer are summed with training weights for each node,plus a bias term, and the sum is transformed using an activationfunction ƒ.

The activation function ƒ is usually a sigmoid function, such asƒ(x)=e^(−xa)/(1+e^(−xa)). The output of this function is in the range of0 to 1. At each node, the computation is a vector product between aweight factor and input vector from the previous layer: y=ƒ(w·x), wherew is the weight factor and x is the input vector. Thus, the computationscan be easily accelerated by single instruction, multiple datainstructions (SIMD) or other accelerators.

MLP is used as a weak classifier for each local region. Each selectedregion associates with one MLP classifier. The final classification isbased on a simple aggregating rule as follows. For a given test samplex, for each selected local region k, extract the local features x_(k) atthat region. Then use a weak MLP classifier C_(k)(x_(k)) to do theprediction. The final output is the aggregated result

${\overset{\_}{C}(x)} = {\frac{1}{K}{\sum\limits_{n = 1}^{K}\;{{C_{n}(x)}.}}}$

Referring next to FIG. 3, a camera feed is received at block 32. Atblock 52, a people list identification may be assembled using facialdetection and recognition. In other words, all the people viewing thecontent (such as a television program) may be recorded using the camera16. Then, video content analysis may be used to identify viewers who arewatching and are depicted in that video stream. Again faces may berecorded with identifiers in a set up phase, in one embodiment.

Video expression analysis may then be used to determine which ones ofthe users viewing the program actually likes the given program at agiven instance of time as indicated in block 54. Over time, favoriteprogram lists for each video identified viewer may be developed asindicated in block 56. Then in block 58, program recommendations basedon the user's computer detected facial expressions may be pushed tofriends over social networking tools, including websites, tweets, textmessages or emails, for example.

References throughout this specification to “one embodiment” or “anembodiment” mean that a particular feature, structure, or characteristicdescribed in connection with the embodiment is included in at least oneimplementation encompassed within the present invention. Thus,appearances of the phrase “one embodiment” or “in an embodiment” are notnecessarily referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, theparticular features, structures, or characteristics may be instituted inother suitable forms other than the particular embodiment illustratedand all such forms may be encompassed within the claims of the presentapplication.

While the present invention has been described with respect to a limitednumber of embodiments, those skilled in the art will appreciate numerousmodifications and variations therefrom. It is intended that the appendedclaims cover all such modifications and variations as fall within thetrue spirit and scope of this present invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. An entertainment-related system for use inassociation with a television, a camera, and an Internet-accessiblesource of streaming video, the source being to provide streaming videorelated to an interactive game playable via an Internet network, thestreaming video to be displayed via the television, theentertainment-related system comprising: a processor; storage to storeprogram instructions to be executed by the processor, the programinstructions, when executed by the processor, resulting in theentertainment-related system being capable of performing operationscomprising: performing facial recognition-related processing, based upon(1) facial image information associated with facial image capture by thecamera of multiple users presently in front of and viewing thetelevision and (2) previously stored facial image data the multipleusers comprising at least one of the multiple users at the televisionwho is to be logged in to the entertainment-related system, the facialrecognition-related processing to be used by the entertainment-relatedsystem for: automatic user identification determination of the multipleusers presently in front of and viewing the television; and logging into the entertainment-related system of at least one of the multipleusers; performing facial expression analysis based upon the facial imageinformation, the facial expression analysis to be used to determine atleast one facial expression of the at least one of the multiple users;capturing, for social network distribution, video clip data comprisingat least a portion of the streaming video that is currently being viewedby the at least one of the multiple users at the television; andproviding, via a social interaction networking tool, for the socialnetwork distribution, current viewing-related activity information ofthe at least one of the multiple users for use in facilitating socialinteraction via the tool, the current viewing-related activityinformation indicating (1) user viewing status of the at least one ofthe multiple users at the television and (2) satisfaction level of theat least one of the multiple users at the television the satisfactionlevel being capable of being based upon the at least one facialexpression the video clip data to be provided for use in the socialnetwork distribution together with the current viewing-related activityinformation.
 2. The entertainment-related system of claim 1, wherein:the previously stored facial data is to be stored in the storage duringset up of the entertainment-related system; the camera is to be coupledto an interface of the entertainment-related system; and theentertainment-related system is also to permit a password-based userlogin.
 3. The entertainment-related system of claim 1, wherein: theentertainment-related system is capable of providing, via the socialnetwork distribution, user like information, user dislike information,user interest information, and/or user disinterest information; and/orthe entertainment-related system further comprises the camera.
 4. Theentertainment-related system of claim 1, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by the entertainment-related system.
 5. Theentertainment-related system of claim 1, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by a remote server.
 6. At least onenon-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions forexecution by an entertainment-related system, the entertainment-relatedsystem being for use in association with a television, a camera, and anInternet-accessible source of streaming video, the source being toprovide streaming video related to an interactive game playable via anInternet network, the streaming video to be displayed via thetelevision, the instructions when executed by the entertainment-relatedsystem resulting in the entertainment-related system being capable ofperforming operations comprising: performing facial recognition-relatedprocessing, based upon (1) facial image information associated withfacial image capture by the camera of multiple users presently in frontof and viewing the television and (2) previously stored facial imagedata the multiple users comprising at least one of the multiple users atthe television who is to be logged in to the entertainment-relatedsystem, the facial recognition-related processing to be used by theentertainment-related system for: automatic user identificationdetermination of the multiple users presently in front of and viewingthe television; and logging in to the entertainment-related system ofthe at least one of the multiple users; performing facial expressionanalysis based upon the facial image information, the facial expressionanalysis to be used to determine at least one facial expression of theat least one of the multiple users; capturing, for social networkdistribution, video clip data comprising at least a portion of thestreaming video that is currently being viewed by the at least one ofthe multiple users at the television; and providing, via a socialinteraction networking tool, for the social network distribution,current viewing-related activity information of the at least one of themultiple users for use in facilitating social interaction via the tool,the current viewing-related activity information indicating (1) userviewing status of the at least one of the multiple users at thetelevision and (2) satisfaction level of the at least one of themultiple users at the television the satisfaction level being capable ofbeing based upon the at least one facial expression the video clip datato be provided for use in the social network distribution together withthe current viewing-related activity information.
 7. The at least onenon-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein: thepreviously stored facial data is to be stored in storage of theentertainment-related system during set up of the entertainment-relatedsystem; the camera is separate from the television and is to be coupledto an interface of the entertainment-related system; and theentertainment-related system is also to permit a password-based userlogin.
 8. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium ofclaim 6, wherein: the entertainment-related system is capable ofproviding, via the social network distribution, user like information,user dislike information, user interest information, and/or userdisinterest information; and/or the entertainment-related system furthercomprises the camera.
 9. The at least one non-transitorycomputer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by the entertainment-related system. 10.The at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 6,wherein: the facial recognition-related processing and the facialexpression analysis are performed, at least in part, by a remote server.11. A method implemented, at least in part, using anentertainment-related system, the entertainment-related system being foruse in association with a television, a camera, and anInternet-accessible source of streaming video, the source being toprovide streaming video related to an interactive game playable via anInternet network, the streaming video to be displayed via thetelevision, the method comprising: performing facial recognition-relatedprocessing, based upon (1) facial image information associated withfacial image capture by the camera of multiple users presently in frontof and viewing the television and (2) previously stored facial imagedata the multiple users comprising at least one of the multiple users atthe television who is to be logged in to the entertainment-relatedsystem, the facial recognition-related processing to be used by theentertainment-related system for: automatic user identificationdetermination of the multiple users presently in front of and viewingthe television; and logging in to the entertainment-related system of atleast one of the multiple users; performing facial expression analysisbased upon the facial image information, the facial expression analysisto be used to determine at least one facial expression of the at leastone of the multiple users; capturing, for social network distribution,video clip data comprising at least a portion of the streaming videothat is currently being viewed by the at least one of the multipleusers; and providing, via a social interaction networking tool, for thesocial network distribution, current viewing-related activityinformation of the user present at the television for use infacilitating social interaction via the tool, the currentviewing-related activity information indicating (1) user viewing statusof the at least one of the multiple users at the television and (2)satisfaction level of the at least one of the multiple users at thetelevision the satisfaction level being capable of being based upon theat least one facial expression, the video clip data to be provided foruse in the social network distribution together with the currentviewing-related activity information.
 12. The method of claim 11,wherein: the previously stored facial data is to be stored in storage ofthe entertainment-related system during set up of theentertainment-related system; the camera is separate from the televisionand is to be coupled to an interface of the entertainment-relatedsystem; and the entertainment-related system is also to permit apassword-based user login.
 13. The method of claim 11, wherein: theentertainment-related system is capable of providing, via the socialnetwork distribution, user like information, user dislike information,user interest information, and/or user disinterest information; and/orthe entertainment-related system further comprises the camera.
 14. Themethod of claim 11, wherein: the facial recognition-related processingand the facial expression analysis are performed, at least in part, bythe entertainment-related system.
 15. The method of claim 11, wherein:the facial recognition-related processing and the facial expressionanalysis are performed, at least in part, by a remote server.
 16. Anentertainment-related system for use in association with a television, acamera, and an Internet-accessible source of streaming video, the sourcebeing to provide streaming video related to an interactive game playablevia an Internet network, the streaming video to be displayed via thetelevision, the entertainment-related system comprising: facialrecognition-related processor to perform processing, based upon (1)facial image information associated with facial image capture by thecamera of multiple users presently in front of and viewing thetelevision and (2) previously stored facial image data the multipleusers comprising at least one of the multiple users at the televisionwho is to be logged in to the entertainment-related system, the facialrecognition-related processing to be used by the entertainment-relatedsystem for: automatic user identification determination of the multipleusers presently in front of and viewing the television; and logging into the entertainment-related system of at least one of the multipleusers; the entertainment-related system being to perform facialexpression analysis based, upon the facial image information, the facialexpression analysis to be used to determine at least one facialexpression of the at least one of the multiple users; theentertainment-related system being to capture, for social networkdistribution, video clip data comprising at least a portion of thestreaming video that is currently being viewed by the at least one ofthe multiple users at the television; and the entertainment-relatedsystem being to provide, via a social interaction networking tool, forthe social network distribution, current viewing-related activityinformation of the at least one of the multiple users for use infacilitating social interaction via the tool, the currentviewing-related activity information indicating (1) user viewing statusof the at least one of the multiple users at the television and (2)satisfaction level of the at least one of the multiple users at thetelevision the satisfaction level being capable of being based upon theat least one facial expression, the video clip data to be provided foruse in the social network distribution together with the currentviewing-related activity information.
 17. The entertainment-relatedsystem of claim 16, wherein: the previously stored facial data is to bestored in storage of the entertainment-related system during set up ofthe entertainment-related system; the camera is separate from thetelevision and is to be coupled to an interface of theentertainment-related system; and/or the entertainment-related system isalso to permit a password-based user login.
 18. Theentertainment-related system of claim 16, wherein: theentertainment-related system is capable of providing, via the socialnetwork distribution, user like information, user dislike information,user interest information, and/or user disinterest information; and/orthe entertainment-related system further comprises the camera.
 19. Theentertainment-related system of claim 16, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by the entertainment-related system. 20.The entertainment-related system of claim 16, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by a remote server.
 21. Anentertainment-related system for use in association with a television, acamera, and an Internet-accessible source of streaming video, the sourcebeing to provide streaming video related to an interactive game playablevia an Internet network, the streaming video to be displayed via thetelevision, the entertainment-related system comprising: a processor;storage to store program instructions to be executed by the processor,the program instructions, when executed by the processor, resulting inthe entertainment-related system being capable of performing operationscomprising: performing facial recognition-related processing based upon(1) facial image information associated with facial image capture by thecamera of multiple users presently in front of and viewing thetelevision and (2) previously stored facial image data the multipleusers comprising at least one of the multiple users at the televisionwho is to be logged in to the entertainment-related system, the facialrecognition-related processing to be used by the entertainment-relatedsystem for: automatic user identification determination of the multipleusers presently in front of and viewing the television; and logging into the entertainment-related system of at least one of the multipleusers; performing facial expression analysis based upon the facial imageinformation, the facial expression analysis to be used to determine atleast one facial expression of the at least one of the multiple users;capturing, for social network distribution, video clip data comprisingat least a portion of the streaming video that is currently being viewedby the at least one of the multiple users at the television; andproviding, via a social interaction networking tool, for the socialnetwork distribution, current viewing-related activity information ofthe at least one of the multiple users for use in facilitating socialinteraction via the tool, the current viewing-related activityinformation indicating (1) user viewing status of the at least one ofthe multiple users at the television and (2) satisfaction level of theat least one of the multiple users at the television the satisfactionlevel being capable of being based upon the at least one facialexpression, the video clip data to be provided for use in the socialnetwork distribution together with the current viewing-related activityinformation; wherein: the camera is separate from the television. 22.The entertainment-related system of claim 21, wherein: the previouslystored facial data is to be stored in the storage during set up of theentertainment-related system; the camera is to be coupled to aninterface of the entertainment-related system; and theentertainment-related system is also to permit a password-based userlogin.
 23. The entertainment-related system of claim 21, wherein: theentertainment-related system is capable of providing, via the socialnetwork distribution, user like information, user dislike information,user interest information, and/or user disinterest information; and/orthe entertainment-related system further comprises the camera.
 24. Theentertainment-related system of claim 21, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by the entertainment-related system. 25.The entertainment-related system of claim 21, wherein: the facialrecognition-related processing and the facial expression analysis areperformed, at least in part, by a remote server.